Jules Polonetsky has the power of life and death. Over contracts, anyway. As the chief privacy officer of DoubleClick, the biggest Internet advertising company, Mr. Polonetsky has the authority to rip up contracts with companies that do not comply...

Jane S. Hoffman, the deputy commissioner of the City Consumer Affairs Department, will be named today to take over for her boss, Jules Polonetsky, who is joining an Internet company in the city, a city official said yesterday. Ms. Hoffman, 34, a...

March 13, 2000, Monday

DoubleClick, the Internet's largest advertisement placement company, has hired two of New York's most prominent consumer advocates in an effort to reassure the public, investors and federal and state regulators that it will respect computer users'...

It was a familiar swindle, but it worked, as it often does, like a charm: A fly-by-night operation promises to smooth the way to citizenship -- for a fee. Then the schemers pull up stakes, and the once-hopeful immigrant is left poorer and afraid of...

Robert Ruggiero likes to compare his immaculate three-story funeral home on Morris Park Avenue in the Bronx to a fancy hotel where no effort is spared to fulfill a customer's wishes. Call F. Ruggiero & Sons at 2 A.M., for example, and you will...

In an incident that New York City's Department of Consumer Affairs said underscored the need to outlaw the sale of all laser pointers to minors, a 12-year-old Jewish boy bought a pointer at a kiosk in Manhattan only to find that it came with a...

Circuit City, the country's largest consumer electronics chain, will mail refund checks to more than 300 customers who paid a 15 percent restocking fee but were not given adequate warning of the fee, New York City's Commissioner of Consumer Affairs...

May 21, 1998, Thursday

To the Editor: Re ''Auto Insurance Is Now Cheaper in Many States'' (Business Day, April 15): The small rate decreases of 3 percent to 20 percent requested by insurance companies are far less than is warranted by the dramatic decline in auto theft...

A rose is a rose, but at Valentine's Day it is certain to be one very expensive rose. The New York City Department of Consumer Affairs announced the results of a study yesterday showing that florists in the five boroughs have raised their prices...